To think this is very bad of the estate agents

[LancashireButterPie]

DH and I are looking to downsize.
We have seen the perfect cottage, not far from our DDs family (handy for childcare as it's currently taking us 40 mins each way).
We rang up to view it and the estate agent refused to let us as she said "An offer has been made and I'm sure it will be accepted".
DH and I wouldn't be making an offer, we would happily pay full asking price. Also we are lucky to have enough in savings to purchase, without selling our own home first although we obviously would at some point.
I feel for the vendors as much as ourselves, would it be unreasonable to push a note through their letterbox informing them what's going on?
It's been two weeks since the estate agent last rebuffed us and the house is still on the market.

This is my fear.

then discover as a friend did, the cottge/house was not for sale at all!
big shock to the house owners
online agency you say…

It doesn’t happen instantaneously though and something not being made SSTC in rightmove is neither here nor there if the estate agents has said to you no thank you we’re not taking on any more viewings. My friend recently went through the process, it took more than a week for it to be marked SSTC on rightmove purely because of admin - if at that stage the vendor was entertaining more viewings it’d be just to get my friend gazumped and I’m sure they’d probably pull out. Sometimes it’s “as good as SSTC” but alas that doesn’t exist as an option in rightmove and this sends some people into a spiral by the looks of it…

Really, once you put an offer in you expect all viewings to stop? That absolutely doesn’t happen in my local housing market. Yes, viewings stop when an offer is accepted, but there can be multiple viewings on a house and multiple bidders until an offer is accepted.

perhaps it works differently in slower markets. I last moved house five years ago and there is no way I would have expected viewings to stop just because I made an offer, I made about five offers against other bidders before I reached sale agreed.

when did you last sell, and did you have multiple people offering?

I think you are talking about something different, the time lag between an offer being accepted and that being flagged on the internet is very different from the time between viewers making offers and the successful offer being accepted.

It’s difficult to know what’s truthful and what isn’t.

Back in the 1990s (in the days of the Asserta website and few online agencies) I was interested in a flat on the street where I was renting. I was told it was off the market when I rang the EA.

I bumped into the vendor when I was coming home from the pub (she was doing the same!) and she was surprised to say the least. She showed me round there and then, herself, 11pm on a Friday night. As it happens I found something else in an area closer to the city centre, but I’m glad I was able to alert her to the EA behaviour.

But it may be the case that someone’s seriously interested. Although 2 weeks..,.,

not even if you are a cash buyer?

My thoughts exactly...either the ea wants it or someone connected to them does!
I'd definitely pop a note through ASAP!
Sounds too suspect to me.
I also would never use them again.
Good luck 💐

An offer doesn't mean that it has been accepted though and the poor vendors! Accepting a potentially low offer when they could have attracted more.

I can beat the OPs experience.
I was banned from viewing any property by three estate agents as I withdrew from a sale after I received the survey. The property needed extensive work and we didn't have the budget.
The agent had bad mouthed me to the whole town. It's taken 5 years to be allowed viewings. One agent even went as far as spreading rumours regarding our 'illegal professions!'

Funnily enough we are now buying a cottage where we sent a letter to the owners. We kept in touch and although it went onto the market it's still there.were waiting for exchange on ours then we'll start conveyancing. I've lost too much money with aborted transactions.
Fwiw the first offer on mine was from the local agent for himself. It was disgustingly low so I said no and went with another agent. He was putting people off too. He got moved to another office after I complained.
All men and all rightly deserving of the bastard estate agent monkier.

Obviously, If an offer has been refused by the vendor, then surely viewing by others would be welcomed by the estate agent and the seller?
It doesn't sound as though this is the situation here.

Hope this works out op!

To me, estate agents rank only slightly above traffic wardens. I have never had experience of a competent agent in my many house moves over the years. Never. Put a note through the door of the house you like and see what happens.

I agree.

They may have lined up the property for someone they know. I don't trust estate agents at all.

Pop a note through the door.

How do you know it was a low offer? The offer might be well over the asking price for all you know! And that might be why the EA is so confident that it will be accepted.

This is what I'd do to, or put a note through the door if OP prefers.
If I was the selller, I'd be very annoyed with the estate agent.

It sounds like input hasn’t yet been accepted or refused. Sellers will often take a bit of time to consider an offer and wait to see if a higher offer comes along.

when my last house sold it was bid on by a lot of first time buyers. Many had no idea how the property market operates, it was painful😩. This thread has shown me that many people have completely different views on how it works.

We had a similar thing with a flat we were buying in Bristol in 2007. We were convinced that the estate agent was doing a backhander as he let us view it, but not make an offer... In the end, we put a note through the door - but positioned it as "we the people who offered £xxx for your flat, and we're really taken with it. Do you have anything else similar for sale"?

the other offer fell through and he phoned us directly. So it's no harm at all in doing this.

We had this happen to us! The EA wouldn’t arrange a viewing, called several times and asked the reason why. We put a note through the door, explaining we were cash buyers, no chain etc and EA was refusing us a viewing. Turns out EA was earmarking property for a relative, and had been refusing quite a lot of viewings.

Estate agents act in their own interests, nobody else’s. They’re salespeople, so they can certainly talk the talk and do the arm-around-you chat, but at the end of the day they want to make a deal as quickly as possible and get their commission away. If that means shutting out new prospective purchasers once a negotiation is underway, they will, because ultimately they’re not interested in whether it’s the best deal for the seller.

They also have relationships with landlords and developers, and will prioritise them over one-time buyers. A lot of deals get done under the table with the agents receiving incentives in the form of higher percentages or other ‘gifts’, so they’ll push forward those buyers regardless of whether they’re the best option for the home owners.

Some larger agencies also encourage competition for commission between sales teams, so they’re not working co-operatively across their database of prospective purchasers, a system which definitely works against the interests of sellers.

At the end of the day, they’re just gatekeepers of the online marketing platforms, which is where the majority of the selling gets done, so the most crucial thing is to check whether their photographer is any good. At the very top end of the market you might get a more bespoke approach, but otherwise you’re basically paying a hefty percentage just to gain access the big property portals. It’s safe to assume that beyond posting your listing and waiting for the phone to ring, there’s not a great deal of effort being made on your behalf.

And you need to be very clear from the beginning that you wish to be informed of every expression of interest, no matter where you are in the process, which makes it more difficult for them to purposely keep you in the dark once there’s an offer on the table.

I agree, I think this is actually good on the part of the EA. Almost certainly the offer has been accepted with the condition that it is taken off the market and they're doing the initial proof of funds etc before taking it off the website. It showing up on RightMove etc doesn't mean it is still on the market. It would be really bad form if they were still showing it and if you were that buyer you'd be writing about it here and everyone would be saying how unscrupulous it was of the EA!

All you can do is keep checking and letting them know you are interested if it falls through, which it could do. With my current home, I was told the same and not allowed to view it, however the accepted offer did then not come good with the proof of funds etc and they opened it to viewings again and I got it. I always thought the EA was really good to treat the previous buyer so honestly and that continued to be my experience throughout the process.

It's true. I wrote about it at the time on mn. Posh market town. I was a madam working on Park Lane, my husband the local drugs dealer.
If I had the money I would have sued. However a very well connected agent spoke up for me and it stopped. We're buying our dream house (not in that town!).